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Hello JP With electricity being the clean future why has this up grade been handled so badly. The workmanship is so disappointing. You have to limbo dance or lay on your back to see the amount of credit left on your meter. It surely would have been better to fit purpose built posts with a solar panel on top like parking meters to keep the light on and illuminate the display. More posts and cards were needed a wasted opportunity in my book. Your comments please. Regards Marge and Parge

The issue of the low pillar windows has been raised with the electricians and will be resolved in the next couple of weeks .

The pillars remain open for use until then as they are serviceable. It is worth noting that the older pillars were also at a low level and very similar in terms of access. We will also be looking at installing a new full window on each of these meters. This was not done on this occasion as we have had to keep and sensibly manage the costs down to accommodate the significant costs of the new meters themselves and the extensive contractor time fitting of them. This has meant although not ideal, re-using the existing pillars as much as possible. If we had of replaced the whole unit then this would have been a superb finish but would have added significant money to the project.

Why was it done in the first place,the old ones served the purpose and who payed the bill for the new ones or did the price per unit increase as has been suggested,the windows are to low down and they are very cumbersome.

The near £22k cost of the upgrade will be coming from the navigation budget, so the toll payer picks up the bill. The increase in cost per unit is purely to pay for the cost of the disposable card which is worked out at around 21.5p. Given that this is against OFGEM rules it could be argued that the cost of the card should also come from the toll account. The BA have purchased and run out of 5000 cards and I am led to believe have ordered another 10000.

So 15000 cards at £3,225 in theory should also come from the toll account if the BA obey the OFGEM rules.

Just because The BA make a request, don't automatically assume they have the powers to make such requests!! Keeping a careful eye on an Authority which is making it's own rules.

Be consulted on how the authority spends the toll payers money, don't make me laugh. Perhaps we could change the personnel at the next election, oh wait, its an unelected quango, no chance there either.

Just because The BA make a request, don't automatically assume they have the powers to make such requests!! Keeping a careful eye on an Authority which is making it's own rules.

I've not used it personally, but there seems to be a website that you can use to make FOI requests of various bodies and it keeps all the correspondence in the public domain so others can follow your query.

A member here has recently put in such a request on a separate subject.

While an FoI request requires the recipient to provide the information requested (within limits), my personal experience with the BA has been that a phone call or a message via the Contact Form, which can be accessed from this page has produced better results.

I would only use FoI if I met with resistance in releasing information, which I haven't so far with the BA.

"..for the avoidance of any doubt, the broads are not legally a national park and do not come under the national park legislation, and nor will they."Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for DEFRA (Hansard 2015)

The older meters have been phased out and only reconditioned ones are available and stocks of the reconditioned ones are dwindling. If we had not done this wholesale exchange now we would have had to close off some of our pillars in the very near future or run a two tier metering system which would have required 2 different card systems. In addition the new meters are the only card meter available which are approved and comply with the up to date MID ( measuring instruments directive) required by Ofgem.

The Broads Authority used its Electrical Pillar Maintenance & Repair Budget to cover the cost of installation of the new metres, we demonstrated considerable savings by re-using the existing Pillars to house the meters.

We agree that the windows are low on the pillars this has been raised with the electricians and is going to be sorted in the next couple of weeks under the existing contract at no extra cost.